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IBM SPSS Statistics vs Starburst Galaxy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM SPSS Statistics
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Data Mining (1st), AI Data Analysis (14th), AI Research (6th)
Starburst Galaxy
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
7th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
2.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of IBM SPSS Statistics is 3.5%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Starburst Galaxy is 1.5%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Starburst Galaxy1.5%
IBM SPSS Statistics3.5%
Other95.0%
Data Science Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

EzzAbdelfattah - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Professor Of Statistics at a university with 10,001+ employees
Advanced predictive analytics have supported my research and student projects across many methods
The only function I may need to be added or hope to be added to IBM SPSS Statistics is how to treat unstructured data. This mainly exists with IBM SPSS Modeler, but I do not think it is able to treat something like videos and similar content unless you are using languages like Python inside IBM SPSS Modeler or inside IBM SPSS Statistics. For the menu itself, for the selection, it does not exist. Thinking of the future, I believe that the owners of IBM SPSS Statistics should think about improving the package itself to be able to treat unstructured data.
NK
Advisory Solutions Architect at Dell Technologies
Unified data querying has accelerated petabyte-scale analytics and simplified dashboard delivery
Starburst Galaxy offers me several best features, which include very fast querying results, automatic indexing of data for long tables, a cost-based optimizer which reduces the time to query large tables, and an agentic feature that lets me talk to my data.I find myself relying most on querying from different databases as well as automatic indexing in my day-to-day work, as I am a data science architect who needs to get the queries in a very short period of time. Starburst Galaxy serves the best purpose for me because if my SLAs are not met with my customers, they will raise a case, and I have tried many other tools, but Starburst Galaxy fits the best. Starburst Galaxy has positively impacted my organization since we were struggling with Denodo and Dremio, which had their own features but were not helpful in querying large amounts of data, especially semi-structured or unstructured data. Starburst Galaxy addresses this with many YAML files and manifest files for automated maintenance, and it helps reduce the small file problem in different HDFS systems. Additionally, Starburst Galaxy has an MCP server that connects to various agentic pipelines, reducing the time to market for data consumption.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"They have many existing algorithms that we can use and use effectively to analyze and understand how to put our data to work to improve what we do."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the Bayesian statistics and descriptive statistics."
"It is a modeling tool with helpful automation."
"Capability analysis is one of the main and valuable functions, and we also do some hypothesis testing in Minitab and summary stats; these are the functions that we find very useful."
"In terms of the features, I think that the modelling section in IBM SPSS Clementine is very good, it has a lot of modeling techniques compared to other tools."
"IBM SPSS Statistics depends on AI."
"It offers very good visualization."
"The solution has numerous valuable features. We particularly like custom tabs. It's very useful. We end up analyzing a lot of software data, so features related to custom tabs are really helpful."
"Starburst Galaxy is becoming a cornerstone of our data platform, empowering us to make smarter and faster decisions across the organization."
"Starburst has provided us with virtually guaranteed performance on complex queries across datasets that are in the tens of gigabytes which complete in seconds."
"Starburst Galaxy has significantly improved our data architecture flexibility and performance management by solving cross-database query challenges and enabling us to utilize iceberg tables externally across our entire data ecosystem."
"The most fundamental feature is the query engine, which is much faster than any of the competitors; Starburst is able to finish most queries within 10 seconds, which is especially important for many non-technical employees."
"I am now able to answer questions in a couple of minutes that would otherwise take hours or days of time for my data engineering teams."
"Starburst on Trino, combined with our SQL-native data transformation tool SQLMesh, has delivered anywhere from a two to five times improvement in compute performance across our transformation DAG."
"Starburst Galaxy serves the best purpose for me because if my SLAs are not met with my customers, they will raise a case, and I have tried many other tools, but Starburst Galaxy fits the best."
"Starburst Galaxy has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to rethink the strategy for data and architect data differently; instead of having multiple data marts and siloed data marts, we have a unified vision, and that is how it is changing."
 

Cons

"The output of charts and graphs that SPSS produces is hideous."
"I have faced some challenges with IBM SPSS Statistics; you need to know what you're doing because it's not very user-friendly."
"Most of the package will give you the fixed value, or the p-value, without an explanation as to whether it it significant or not. Some beginners might need not just the results, but also some explanation for them."
"Technical support needs some improvement, as they do not respond as quickly as we would like."
"I would like SPSS to improve its integration with other data-filing IBM tools. I also think its duration with data, utilization, and graphics could be better."
"The solution could improve by providing a visual network for predictions and a self-organizing map for clustering."
"This solution is not scalable."
"Needs more statistical modelling functions."
"I would like Starburst to leverage AI to improve usability. Data lakes are complicated and difficult for users to explore."
"The most persistent issue is the cluster spin-up time."
"Starburst Galaxy can be improved by discovering unstructured data and building in streaming ingestion because we are currently using Kafka for that purpose."
"As a hosted option, I wish I had more control over the cluster configuration, specifically regarding some of the more advanced options."
"Cluster startup time is another pain point, typically 3 to 5 minutes, which is not the worst with proper planning but can be annoying for ad-hoc work."
"Cluster startup time can be slow, sometimes taking over a minute."
"I think there are areas of improvement with respect to AI adaptability, and also in general, the amount of connectors working with other tools are areas where it can be expanded."
"I would like to see better alerting integrations for failures and errors in scheduled tasks and maintenance jobs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."
"SPSS is an expensive piece of software because it's incredibly complex and has been refined over decades, but I would say it's fairly priced."
"More affordable training for new staff members."
"The price of IBM SPSS Statistics could improve."
"While the pricing of the product may be higher, the accompanying service and features justify the investment."
"The price of this solution is a little bit high, which was a problem for my company."
"The pricing of the modeler is high and can reduce the utility of the product for those who can not afford to adopt it."
"Our licence is on a yearly renewal basis. While pricing is not the primary concern in our evaluation, as products are assessed by whether they can meet our user needs and expertise, the cost can be a limiting factor in the number of licences we procure."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
University
6%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
11%
Construction Company
7%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM SPSS Statistics?
I think the price of the solution is very reasonable. The cost depends; you have the option for subscription or you can purchase the license. Most of our customers are paying every year for a type ...
What needs improvement with IBM SPSS Statistics?
One of the frustrations I have with IBM SPSS Statistics is the licensing, which is more of a company issue because we have limited licenses and have to ask someone to get off IBM SPSS Statistics so...
What is your primary use case for IBM SPSS Statistics?
My main use case for IBM SPSS Statistics involves data cleaning and tabulation. I also use it sometimes for data validation. I use IBM SPSS Statistics to perform correlations, check data, remove re...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Starburst Galaxy?
I recommend experimenting with different cluster sizes to determine what works best for your particular use case.
What needs improvement with Starburst Galaxy?
Starburst Galaxy can be improved by discovering unstructured data and building in streaming ingestion because we are currently using Kafka for that purpose. We rely on third-party tools for ingesti...
What is your primary use case for Starburst Galaxy?
My main use case for Starburst Galaxy is querying petabytes of data across vast data sources, and I use a federated query engine to join data sources from different databases and then join them usi...
 

Also Known As

SPSS Statistics
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

LDB Group, RightShip, Tennessee Highway Patrol, Capgemini Consulting, TEAC Corporation, Ironside, nViso SA, Razorsight, Si.mobil, University Hospitals of Leicester, CROOZ Inc., GFS Fundraising Solutions, Nedbank Ltd., IDS-TILDA
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SPSS Statistics vs. Starburst Galaxy and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
909,153 professionals have used our research since 2012.